Snowshoeing

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

OK, so we got a deep 16" of great snow last night, no ice or sleet.
I snowshoed about a mile through the woods on a trail. But I actually was the only one to break that trail today (everyone else probably quit being outside after shoveling out today), and believe me, it was HARD!!! All that deep powdery snow- I sank about EIGHT inches down with every step, and had to really lift my legs REALLY high for every step. I even had to cross several streams over a narrow board in my snowshoes! I found out it is not easy to tightrope walk in snowshoes. Although the whole trip was about only a mile, it seemed like more work than a 30 mile bike ride.

By the time I made it to my destination (a wooden bench overlooking an icey pond) my legs were shaking and rubbery, and my heart was pounding despite having rested briefly several times on the way. I brushed the snow off the bench and lay down on my back to rest a good long while. Man that felt good. When I looked up overhead, the sky was white and the black tree branches were all reaching towards the center of the bench clearing, it looked like a giant black lacey snowflake pattern in the sky over me, and i was right in the middle of the snowflake. Very beautiful. The woods were silent except for some woodpeckers and the streams babbling.

Going back over my own trail was a whole different story, if I kept to my own footprints I only sank about an inch this time- BIG difference, and much easier and more fun. I was glad to get back home. Tomorrow will be easier to do the same trail again. I expect to see some other prints on the trail tomorrow, maybe crosscountry ski tracks or even other snowshow tracks, like I've seen before. It's fun to guess from the snowshoe tracks whether it was a woman or a man who had passed on the trail, and what brand shoes they had. Makes me feel like a real tracker.

Here's a picture from today- we had already shoveled off the porch and paths, and unfortunately the wind had removed the pretty snow from the trees. But I climbed our little "Mt.Everest" for fun, where the snowplow guy had dumped some of the snow this morning. So there I am showing off on "the summit" in my snowshoes, just about to go out into the woods. -I didn't look quite so energetic by the time I got back, however!